Megaman 9 Press Release

I finally beat Megaman 9, and I thought I’d celebrate by sharing the amazing boxart and packaging that only press release copies of the game came with.

Yeah, not only is that an actual NES game box with the hilarious homage to Megaman 1’s cover (the lines on the top read “ultrasound graphics synthesis” and “8-bit fidelity engine”), but the game CD came in a NES cartridge shaped case! I don’t normally get excited about this sort of thing–but seriously this has got to be one of the coolest package designs ever for ANYTHING. Lucky, lucky game reviewers is all I have to say.

My favorite part is in this level where you have wind pressing against you and you have to make like twenty insanely tight jumps across spinning platforms. Then on the next screen you have to fall down past some spikes to a lower level, and you realize as you get flung into the spikes that the wind has shifted to blowing in the other direction without you realizing it! Then you have to redo everything.

Before 9 I would have said 2 was the hardest, but I wonder if 9 is harder simply because in 2 you have to wonder how much of the difficulty was intentional (and a lot is, much more so than the first game) and how much was just “the era” (read: user-unfriendly design) and the technology–whereas with 9 you just want to scream at it for going out of its way to reproduce some of the most ridiculous moments from the previous games (I mean, 9 even has the option to turn on or off the sprite flicker glitch from the old games).

I still think the hardest thing EVER in Mega Man is the blob boss in 2’s Wily Castle. It was just pure sadistic evil. And also the disappearing block “puzzles.” As hard as 9 is, its disappearing blocks pale compared to 2’s. THIS IS OBJECTIVE FACT.

3-8 progressively castrated “classic” Mega Man difficulty in the name of “good design” choices without introducing enough new difficulty of their own. Psh to them! Mega Man 9 is for REAL MEN.

Also: I tried to look for Lite Brite game sprites, but instead I just found bead art:

@kafaw: I always thought those disappearing blocks in MM2 were indeed laughably difficult, but I imagined there would be tougher challenges hiding somewhere in the next six games… I’ll take your word for it.

mayhap, I’ll have to throw down some Xbox monies and get this ridiculous game.

@daaavid: There are interesting and unique challenges in the other games, but I never felt any of them added up to the difficulty you go through in the first two games (if you play them in order)… especially since each game gives you some new tricks to use. But I do remember the snowboarding in 8 being really tough…

@jeremygiant: Actually… I looked it up, and the blob boss I’m thinking of is actually from the first game. It comes back in a lot of the games, though…